money it can often be the barrier between being stuck where you are or breaking through to the next level. This includes having or not having one bUDGETusing it properly, hidden income or even wrong intentions – all these affect you growth trajectory. These four shared secrets have helped my company take our clients to the next level.

1. Financial transparency for ROI

The first blind spot we often notice new customers there isn't a clear reporting link between your tools like ads and a CRM like HubSpot to see which channels are driving the most important return on investment (ROI). Do you know your best performing channels? Or your best sales pitch? What is the most open document that leads to a closed deal?

And we're not just talking about marketing and sales; this applies to many related platforms — for example, closed loop revenue or your ERP systems. When things are not connected, they are disconnected and unconnected. He ends up flying blind. without connecting your marketing tools with your revenue tools, and being a CRM, financial platform or ERP, to name a few, there is a disconnect and the arms and legs end up moving in different directions.

Here's a simple example we see all the time: If you knew that one channel brought in more offers at a 75% faster conversion rate, wouldn't you invest more time and energy in that channel than a that only had a 10% conversion rate. ? Many people do not want to share revenue numbers within the company, but all this information informs other departments; without dividing these revenue numbersthe secret to your money is to keep it in hidden silos.

Connected: I Achieved $100M in Annual Revenue by Being More Transparent – Here Are the 3 Strategies That Helped Me Succeed

2. Strategic investment to avoid blind spots

Another financial blind spot not investing in marketing. We've had prospects come in with no budget and no in-house marketing team, but we want to grow by 150% and spend a total of $1,000. I wish achieving growth like this was possible, but unfortunately, it isn't. The old saying that you get what you pay for, or it takes money to make money, rings true. Your investment goals should match yours growth objectives. The amount of money invested should be measured not only by short-term and quick profits, but also by looking at long-term investments towards growth.

You will never measure one Human Resources Department strictly in the number of employees. However, looking at the whole longevity picture among many other important KPIs, you won't be using an HR department for several months. It is something that is constant and requires care and attention. Marketing is no different – ​​if you strictly measure marketing by just the number of leads, you're missing the whole picture. Marketing helps drive results through nurtured campaigns, creates automation, scores results, builds new campaigns and tests, supports sales enablement activities, and many other components. A buying cycle is rarely a straight line to click and buy, unless we're talking about Amazon.

That said, everyone has budgets, limits and bumper lanes to stay within. bUDGET to the wind, but your goal should match your budget. If you have modest growth goals, be realistic about the budget needed to get there. Set micro growth goals, but stay on track for long-term growth.

Connected: You won't have a solid budget until you follow these 5 tips

3. Data-driven decisions to save money

Another money secret that costs companies is spending without it data to support it. We had a company that required a new website, a complete redesign, new navigation, new content, new page layouts, migration to a new CMS, a new theme, and the works. They said they had a budget of $75,000 for the entire project. In theory, it sounds good, right? Ready to invest? Check. Is there a budget? Check. Do you know what they want the end result to be? Check. But when we asked them the next question, they looked at us like we were crazy: “Do you have data to support the changes you're asking to make?” Are you using a tool like Hotjar to see the real user data behind how these proposed changes will affect your existing leads and the single source your sales team was currently using for leads?

The answer was no. When the heat map was overlaid, you know what happened? Well, they were looking to build that new navigation and replace the old one – nearly 90% of their traffic was going to two pages of their site directly from the navigation that they originally wanted to remove. In this case, it wasn't just about having money, it was about making sure the decisions you make with your budget are informed by real data: user data, sales data, marketing data, and more. The more informed you are about closing your data loop, the better your bottom line will be.

Connected: Want to be better at decision making? Here are 5 steps to better data-driven business decisions

4. Modern marketing channels to drive growth

What will likely cost you more is using old-school channels without the ability to measure. Companies have spent the last decade on traditional marketing channels and are moving to digital. The company's historic growth has relied on things like trade shows, print, postcards and online magazines. We ask what is the ROI you've seen from each channel and rarely can they share a specific revenue number and say it's for brand awareness. Some of the budgets may be over $50K to $100K spent on these traditional methods, but there is no ROI attached, yet they continue them.

When the pandemic hit, we saw a massive influx in businesses moving from boots-on-the-ground to digital. The lockdown changed everything; there were no more trade shows, no more door knocking, and no one picking up their mail or faxes every day. It made traditional sales channels challenging and obsolete and forced a new level of openness to try new ways of getting work done. In the example of running online magazine ads, there are many ways to capture them, we can use UTM tracking, referral analysis or create a custom landing page for the offer and capture the first ones directly . Without directing them to a landing page or form, you rely solely on online publishing for data and analytics. We've had people show a list of names only, no email to follow up on, or only show a random number of visitors to the page, not a single name. It's important to know what they will offer for reporting and tracking when publishing or using traditional channels. The general rule is to use links and tools that use old methods in technology and not to spend blindly on channels that cannot be measured.

Stop wasting time, energy and revenue on these blind spots. They have easy solutions, so you can avoid them and focus on growing your business!